Key Points

When hypoxia was combined with insulin, muscle glucose transport was significantly increased

The glucose transport pathway is still present in muscle of diabetics, even those with insulin resistance, and can be stimulated with hypoxia

The Breathing Diabetic Summary

Let’s first note that this paper was written in 1995 and, based off of the title, we can see that they already knew that hypoxia could stimulate glucose transport in muscle. In fact, the background material from the introduction indicates that it was known that hypoxia stimulated glucose transport in a similar way that exercise does. What this study aimed to discover was whether that hypoxia-driven glucose transport was still evident in insulin-resistant muscle.

Jumping straight into their findings, the two takeaway points were (1) that hypoxia stimulates glucose transport in insulin-resistant muscle and (2) that hypoxia + insulin are additive in their stimulating effect of glucose transport, i.e., insulin plus hypoxia will lower blood glucose more than either alone.

For us, the important thing to note is that hypoxia can stimulate glucose transport, even in insulin-resistant muscle (e.g., those with type-2 diabetes). They also cited a previous study that found that intermittent hypoxia might have the capability to restore insulin sensitivity, a finding that will be confirmed by further research.

The results of this paper really resonated with me and helped me understand how practicing breath holds lowered my blood sugars, even without me knowing it at the time. Additionally, this paper led me down a rabbit hole of research showing that intermittent hypoxia improves glucose tolerance, which eventually led to the development of Principle 3.